The field of communications has become increasingly important in today's society. One area of importance associated with network communications relates to network routing. Routing protocols allow one or more components, devices, or modules to correctly direct information to its appropriate next destination. Certain paths or designated routes may be considered optimal or preferred over others. As traffic and subscriber base of end users increases, so too does the importance of efficient management of communication sessions and data flows. In particular, traffic flow characteristics can facilitate management of communication sessions by providing some idea to service providers about capacity considerations between network elements, packet loss characteristics in the network, or other network aspects to be considered.